It's Even Worse Than It Looks

Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein,  It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional system collided with the New politics of Extremism ; 2012, Basic Books, 205 pp. 

In October 2011, Congress received its lowest approval rating (9 percent) in polling history.  Public trust in the government’s capacity to solve the serious problems facing the country also hit record lows.  The U.S. has experienced the first-ever downgrade of U.S. securities because the rating agencies see little hope of effective government.  The public viewed both parties negatively, and President Obama’s job approval rating was mired in the forties.  The widespread consensus was that politics and governance were utterly dysfunctional.  In spite of the perilous state of the global economy—and with it the threat of another financial crisis and recession—no one expected the president and Congress to accomplish anything of consequence before the 2012 election. (Pg. xii).  The authors wrote this book to try to clarify the source of dysfunctional politics and what it will take to change it.

Two overriding sources of dysfunction are identified.  First, is the serious mismatch between the political parties philosophies, parties which have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties but, unlike a parliamentary system, with a governing system including separation of powers, that makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act.  Second, the Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier, scornful of compromise and proud of it; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.  (Note: until recently I mostly voted Republican and identified with their professed fiscal philosophy.  Now I am Independent and surprisingly find that only 10% of the population is Independent.  I find that most that identify as Republican, will not read opposing views, like this book).  Recognizing these two dysfunctional realities and understanding how we got here is key to finding a way back to a functioning government.  Until voters learn to reward problem solving and punish obstruction, American democracy will remain in serious danger.

My Notes:

Pg. 31:  The roots of the current broken politics go back to the major societal shifts in the 1960s but none of the roots have been more important than developments set in motion in the election of 1978: Newt Gingrich was elected as a Republican to the House as a representative from Georgia.  The Democrats had controlled the House for the past twenty-four years, and he believed that the great advantages conferred by incumbent status made a race-by-race approach to winning a majority for his party a losing one.  The strategy he settled on would bring him to power but have a devastating impact on the institution he ultimately led.  His core strategy was to destroy the institution in order to save it, to so intensify public hated of Congress that voters would buy into the notion of the need for sweeping change and throw the majority bums out.  His method? To unite his Republicans in refusing to cooperate with Democrats in committee and on the floor, while publicly attacking them as a permanent majority presiding over and benefiting from a thoroughly corrupt institution.  Gingrich did not hide his strategy, both Democrats and Republicans were deeply unsettled by his strategy, one exception was Dick Cheney.  Sixteen years later his strategy led to a 1994 Republican majority party in the House and a third of that majority were strong Gingrich loyalists as he was elected Speaker of the House.

Pg. 40:  At the urging of Gingrich and other leaders, most Representatives left their families in their districts and spent as little time in Washington as possible.  Gingrich wanted to establish the House almost as a parallel government, challenging the president and his policy initiatives—and his very ability to shape the agenda—at every turn.  Believing that Clinton was soft and would cave to pressure, he confronted Clinton at every turn.  Most of his efforts centered on issues in the Contract with America conservative pledge Republican candidates had run on in the 1994 election, that included elements like a balanced budget amendment, a tough crime package, and term limits for members of Congress.  Most of the congressional challenge to Clinton came over budget-related matters, as the House Republicans tried to use the threat of a breach on the debt limit and of shutdowns in major parts of the government to bludgeon the president into accepting their demands to cut spending and cut regulations and taxes.  This culminated at the end of the Speaker’s first year in two government shutdowns, which backfired on Gingrich and his party. 

Pg. 42:  Gingrich deserves a dubious kind of credit for many of the elements that have produced the current state of politics.  He crystalized the approach of crafting a cohesive, parliamentary-style minority party and using it as a battering ram to stymie and damage a president of the other party.  By moving to paint with a broad brush his own institution as elitist, corrupt, and arrogant, he undermined basic public trust in Congress and government, reducing the institution’s credibility over a long period.  His attacks on partisan adversaries in the White House and Congress created a norm in which colleagues with different views became mortal enemies.  In nationalizing congressional elections, he helped invent the modern permanent campaign, allowing electoral goals to dominate policy ones; the use of overheated rhetoric and ethics charges as political weapons; and the take-no-prisoner politics of confrontation and obstruction that have become the new normal.  Many members of the freshmen class of 1994, and others who were Gingrich allies like Rick Santorum, ultimately moved to the Senate, taking the norms they had inculcated in the House to the previously more restrained Senate and helping to move its culture in a more confrontational and obstructive direction.  Of course the Democrats picked up on the new ethics approach as they demonstrated with their brutal attacks on Robert Bork in 1987.  This has led to an endless cycle of confrontation over judicial nominees.  But one has to look back to Gingrich as the singular political figure who set the tone that followed.

Pg. 58:  Relative ideological shifts between the two parties account for much, but not all of the asymmetric polarization.  Other important factors are the rise of the new media and the culture of which it became an essential part, as well as the changing role of money and politics.   (See my August 2009 review of: Robert G. Kaiser, “So Damn Much Money” (The Triumph Of Lobbying And The Corrosion Of American Government), Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, 377 Pages)

Pg. 86:  The right to filibuster and unlimited debate is not in the Constitution nor has it for a long time been an integral part of the Senate.  The framers of the Constitution did not establish the basis of unlimited debate in the Senate, but senators introduced it in the first decade of the nineteenth century.  The first Senates had the same provision as the House of Representatives, to allow a simple majority to stop debate and move to a vote, something called in parliamentary parlance “moving the previous question.”

In an unintended quirk that changed history, Vice President Aaron Burr, in his 1805 farewell address to the Senate, suggested that it clean up its rule book, eliminating duplicative and extraneous rules, among them the previous-question motion.  The Senate had no intention of allowing unlimited debate, but from that point on, any senator could take to the floor and hold it as long as he or she could stay there.  It was several decades before any senator took advantage of the quirk, and even after, the move to block action by debating nonstop was rare.  The lack of any rule or process to limit debate lasted until 1917, when a filibuster over efforts to rearm America in preparation for WWI by just five senators—an angry President Wilson called them “a little band of willful men”—endangered American preparedness.  That led to a backlash and a new rule allowing cloture—stopping the debate—if two-thirds of senators voting agreed.  (The rule, XXII, stayed more or less intact until the 1970s, when the number required to stop the debate was reduced to sixty senators.)

Pg. l01: The target of holds, filibusters, and other delay and obstruction tactics is no longer an individual judge or cabinet member hated for a real or imagined ideological leaning.  People in congress have become more loyal to party than to country.  As a result, the political system has become grievously hobbled at a time when the country faces unusually serious challenges and grave threats.  Reducing the role of filibusters in the Senate may be more productive than altering rules of campaign finance.

The minority party in the Senate has an effective veto over a president and the majority party.  Senators’ overuse of the filibuster has created a routine supermajority hurdle that the framers never anticipated and that has not occurred before in American history.  No other democratically elected leader around the world faces such a hurdle.  Changes in Senate rules to make both filibusters and holds less burdensome and vexing would make a huge difference when the president enjoys majorities in both congressional chambers (p. 165).

Pg. 131:  A needed agenda for improving the performance of America’s dysfunctional politics needs to start with addressing the most problematic features of the party system, including the vast ideological gulf between the parties, their increasing internal homogeneity, the prevalence of constituencies safe for one party or the other, the news organizations and outside groups’ reinforcement of ideological purity and extreme partisanship, and the rough parity between the parties nationally that contributes to the intensity and stakes of conflict.  All these factors together produce a hotly contested, never-ending permanent campaign to control the White House and Congress. 

Pg. 132:  Much of the dysfunctionality Americans observe in their government is a direct consequence of the GOP’s unabashed ambition to reverse decades of economic and social policy by any means available.

Three avenues of electoral reform the authors believe have some promise of cooling the war between the parties.  The first is to moderate politics by expanding the electorate.  Higher turnout would pull more citizens with less-fixed partisan and ideological commitments into the electorate.  Near-universal voting (achieved through Australian-style mandatory attendance at the polls) would virtually eliminate the parties’ incentive to diminish the turnout of those likely to support their opponent and to mobilize their strongest supporters.  Note: In Australia registered voters who do not show up at the polls have to either provide a reason for not voting or pay a modest fine, equivalent to about $15. 

The second is to reduce the presumed bias against moderate voters and candidates by altering how votes in the election are converted into seats in government.  We need non-partisan control of gerrymandering of legislative districts, replace closed primary elections with open or semi-closed primaries, and provide instant runoff voting.

The third avenue seeks to break the polarizing dynamic of the parties through changes in campaign fund-raising and spending rules and practices. 

Pg. 186:  Republicans in office have driven both the widening of the ideological gap between the parties and the strategic hyperpartisanship on such crucial issues as financial stabilization, economic recovery, deficits and debt, health-care reform, and climate change.  In the presidential campaign and in Congress, their leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending and kowtowed to the most strident voices within their party.

Essential Pinocchio-like websites to check on politician’s claims:

http://factcheck.org/and http://www.politifact.com/